Yet questions remain about how Duval as a district can compete with growing competition for students and funding from charter schools and private schools.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti announced Monday that he will withdraw his proposal for open enrollment for all Duval neighborhood public schools after objections from African-American leaders and others in the community who fear it could lead to school closures.

At a news conference Monday, Vitti asked community members who opposed open enrollment to help him market Duval schools to parents and students.

“We are facing a crisis in enrollment,” he said. “I want the focus to be on rallying behind [neighborhood] schools. We are stronger together.”

He was speaking to a room full of African-American community leaders, pastors, educators and the news media at West Jacksonville Elementary. Many in attendance are members of the Baptist Ministers Conference in Jacksonville or the local NAACP branch.

Some ministers thanked Vitti for changing course on open enrollment. But others criticized him for not informing community leaders and residents sooner.

“You’re going to have to do a better job of engaging the community prior to these issues coming up three weeks out,” said Isaiah Rumlin, president of the Jacksonville NAACP branch and of Rumlin Insurance. “The community was in an uproar because they didn’t have the time to vet” the open enrollment plan.

The School Board was to discuss and vote on open enrollment at Tuesday’s board meeting. Community members first discussed it and asked questions at three public meetings in the past two weeks.

If open enrollment had passed, tens of thousands of parents would have gained a new educational choice. Instead of being bound by their address to enroll at their neighborhood elementary school, they could have chosen from any Duval neighborhood elementary school that had room.

Proponents, including board member Jason Fischer, said parents would be more likely to stay in a Duval school that they have chosen. He pointed to waiting lists and lotteries at Duval’s magnet schools.

But opponents of open enrollment, including School Board members Paula Wright and Constance Hall, held that it would exacerbate parental defections from already struggling schools, which are mainly in African-American and low-income neighborhoods.

Vitti said he had no intention of closing schools; he intended to invest more resources and money into them. But fears and distrust were drowning out that message, he said.

“These are leaders in the community; they talk to people,” Vitti said. “I don’t believe we can transform schools if everybody is not on the same page. I felt the balance tip on the trust issue.”

Jon Heymann, CEO of the Jacksonville Children’s Commission, said the potential benefits of open enrollment would not have outweighed the negative impacts.

He estimated that only 56 schools would have been open to new students under open enrollment, because many desirable schools are full. On the other hand, the prospect of losing students cast a cloud over some Duval schools in people’s eyes.

“Unintended consequences are still consequences,” Heymann said.

Even so, Vitti said, the main reason for open enrollment remains: competition.

The number and influence of competing charter schools is building in Duval and in Tallahassee, Vitti said. Charter school operators with deep pockets and strong lobbyists are flooding Florida, he said.

On Tuesday, for instance, the Duval School Board will vote on a contract for a new, nationally operated charter school to open and a contract allowing an existing charter school to expand.

In the long run, Vitti said, Duval must develop a communitywide response to the challenge.

“In Jacksonville, we had been used to mom-and-pop charter schools,” he said recently.

“But what I’ve seen lately is the rise of the for-profit, national charter schools. They have a wider network, making it easier to recruit teachers and principals from other counties. And they’ve got more funds for building new schools and for marketing.”

Many of those charter schools, Vitti said, are locating near high-scoring public schools, not struggling ones, and they’re competing for students and funding that would have gone to the district. Adding to that, state lawmakers are debating bills to expand publicly funded scholarships so more public school parents can afford private-school tuitions.

Duval lost nearly $50 million from students leaving the district, Vitti said, and it may lose $15 million to $20 million more in the upcoming school year.

Wright told the community leaders and ministers they are needed to get behind district efforts to improve schools and help them survive, noting that they are in front of hundreds of parents each week.

“We need your help ... to get the message out,” she said. “This is the opportunity to seize the moment, to make great things happen.”

Some of the ministers said afterward they would support Duval’s marketing efforts but are awaiting an agenda from Vitti and the School Board, rather than each going his own way.

“The groups ought to be sure we’re getting one agenda that we can rally around to achieve the goal,” said E.I. Norman, pastor emeritus of New Redeemed Missionary Baptist Church, in the Eastside.

Rumlin said the NAACP opposes charter schools taking money from public schools, but he wants to be sure that open enrollment is not going to return.

“We’re going to have to get with the superintendent and the board and dive into the entire public school system in Duval,” he said, “and look at what is working and what is not working. I think there are more good things going on in public schools than we even know about.”

So it's back to the tried and true method of physically moving your child to the better school zone, and abandoning the hood. (For the parents who actually care)
Depending and isolating, let me know how far that gets you.

Almost a caricature of the ole ' Baptists and the Bootleggers '. I wonder for whom the ministers are fronting ? The schools must be money pits for someone? Race hustling ? Of course, and the T~U has aided and abetted in that with past comments and posturing. Vitti becomes more impressive as time goes by. But when you bring someone from the outside the unknown takes awhile to reveal itself. The " Thousand Mile Rule " ( the further someone is from where they'll manage the better they'll be )when selecting management assures the Public that they'll never get competent management.

What is that old saying? "If it ain't broke don't fix it". Well it's broke, time to fix it. Keeping an under performing school open, just to keep a school open does nothing to help struggling students. Stop thinking about yourselves, ( politicians, so called community leaders) and start thinking about the students. The students are the ones who suffer in the end.